Model finally feeling super

Beverly Johnson broke ground as black cover girl

LOS ANGELES — Supermodel Beverly Johnson knows all the secrets in the modeling game and has a few of her own. As the first black ever to grace the cover of America's Vogue magazine, Johnson has managed to stay on camera for 48 years.

That's why she's the perfect choice to serve as one of the three judges on TV Land's new show, "She's Got the Look." It's a competition to find the next great supermodel, 35 or older.

The world of modeling can be wrenching, Johnson says in a meeting room of a hotel here. "You're not protected." Her first lesson came when she was already working for Glamour and Vogue but had not signed with a modeling agency, and word had not gotten out about this luminous newcomer.

"I went to the agencies, and they all turned me down. I got a call from the largest agency — now this is the agency that told me I was too fat — I walk into the agency that had turned me down three days earlier and she said, 'Oh, you've lost so much weight.' I thought, 'I think I know what this business is about.'

"I remember going to have my picture taken and this photographer kept getting closer and closer. Pretty soon he was kissing me. I ran to the agency and said, 'This guy! And all of a sudden he was kissing me.' And she said, 'Is he doing that again?' I was 17. ... I realized right then and there you've got to be really smart, really savvy and take care of yourself."

The pressure to stay thin in a world of fat salaries is always there, too, says Johnson, who's dressed in a bright orange jersey dress and gold high-heeled sandals.

"I've had bulimia and anorexia, you name it," she says. "I know the girls from the model show say they don't starve themselves. 'I eat anything I want.' Because in their minds they really DO eat anything they want, but it's just a little piece like that," she squeezes air between her thumb and forefinger.

"In their mind, they think they're eating anything they want. I know because I've been there. 'Oh, I'm naturally thin.' Yeah, because you don't eat anything."

Johnson was a competitive swimmer as a teenager. She was 17, on a full scholarship at Northeastern University and determined to become a lawyer when she was laid off from her $28-a-week summer job as swim coach at the YWCA.

"I had a girlfriend who was from New York City and she said, 'Why don't you become a model?' I didn't know what a model was. She got the magazine and I said, 'You just stand there like that?' And she said, 'Yeah.' "

That's when Johnson remembered a co-worker named Mimi who'd worked with her in a boutique and taught her about fashion. Mimi had given her a phone number of a woman in New York suggesting she should call if she ever decided to model.

"I found the number and it was Jax Fifth Avenue, a very fashionable boutique in New York. I called the number. I called my mother and called my dad. We went against my dad's wishes and she got me an interview with Glamour magazine, and the rest is history."

It was history all right, when in August 1974 she posed for that famous Vogue cover. "The thing is I didn't know it was a biggie," she smiles. "I didn't know the impact around the world as far as being the first African-American to be on the cover. That was a whole new (thing). It also made me aware of the world. Where I came from, where I fit in and also this huge global responsibility I felt all of a sudden."

Johnson, who's been married twice, is single and the mother of a 28-year-old daughter who is a plus-size model. Her toughest time came during her divorce from her second husband, music publisher Danny Sims, she says.

"I was so naive and this Svengali, he was more powerful than I was, and I lost custody of my daughter. She was 3. It wasn't a matter of fit or unfit. It was, 'You're a model and you're going to be traveling. And he said he's going to make his office in the home.' It was the most devastating period of my life."

She moved 10 blocks away and visited her daughter often. "And finally at 11 years old when she was being constantly left with nannies, she said, 'Mommy, I want to come live with you.' He was over the whole thing of being angry."

Devoted to golf and dating a golf pro, Johnson says she's determined to improve her 10 handicap.

"My dream has changed," she says. "I always wanted to have an extraordinary life and I think I do, but now I'm putting the emphasis on being happy. The cab driver said, 'You're the happiest people I've had in this cab for a long time.' I am. I'm happy, and I didn't know it. I think people take that for granted."

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